The Taliban have released two Afghan activists at a time when the United Nations and human rights watchdogs have raised alarms over the increase in arbitrary detentions in Afghanistan in recent months.

Nargis Sadat, a women’s rights defender, and Zakaria Osuli, a university lecturer and author, were released on Monday after being detained separately for more than two months by the Taliban.

The Taliban have not commented on why the two were detained or released.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, in a tweet on Monday welcomed their release but voiced concern over the Taliban’s use of arbitrary detentions against Afghan activists.

“We continue to engage with de facto authorities on cases but are dismayed by lack of information provided, despite ongoing requests. We call for the immediate release of all those arbitrarily detained. No Afghan should be detained for exercising their freedom of expression,” wrote UNAMA.

Last month, Amnesty International reported that the Taliban have been targeting critics for “unlawful detention.” The rights group said in most cases detainees have “no legal remedy or access to their families.”

“Amnesty International is calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative mechanism in Afghanistan at the earliest opportunity, with a focus on evidence preservation to pursue international justice,” stated Amnesty International’s press release.

On March 27, the Taliban arrested Matiullah Wesa, an advocate of girls’ education and the founder of PenPath, a community network campaigning for education in Afghanistan.

The Taliban said Wesa was arrested in Kabul for what they called “suspicious” activities.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA that Wesa “had secret and open meetings without informing the [Taliban] government. He also had connections abroad and was getting instructions from abroad. Therefore, he must have been brought for questioning and interrogation.”

Wesa’s brother, Attaullah Wesa, who went into hiding after his brother was arrested, rejects the Taliban’s claims.

“Our activities — pictures and videos of the activities of PenPath and our team are public. Our meeting with the international community, our people and authorities are not secret,” Attaullah Wesa told VOA.

Human Rights Watch has called on the Taliban to release Matiullah Wesa and other activists in detention.

Sahar Fetrat of Human Rights Watch told VOA that “Human Rights Watch demands the immediate and unconditional release of Matiullah Wesa and all those arrested.”

Human Rights Watch reported that in recent months the Taliban have increased their crackdown on dissent.

“In recent months they have increasingly targeted their critics for arrest, including civil society activists, human rights defenders, and women protesters,” Human Rights Watch stated in a press release on March 29.
…

Authorities in southwestern Pakistan said Monday that a powerful bomb blast struck a police vehicle, killing at least four people and injuring 15 others.  

The bombing occurred on a busy road in central Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. The dead included two police personnel and two civilians, with hospital officials fearing the death toll could rise.  

Waseem Baig, a spokesman for the city’s main hospital, confirmed the casualties to VOA by phone, saying several among those wounded “are in critical condition.” 

A senior provincial police officer told local media the explosives were planted in a motorcycle. 

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the bombing as a terrorist attack, his office said. 

The outlawed Baluchistan or Baluch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the bombing. Pakistan, the United States and Britain have designated the BLA as a global terrorist organization. Baluch insurgents routinely stage attacks against security forces in Baluchistan. Militants linked to the outlawed Pakistani Taliban and Islamic State are also active in the sparsely populated region. 

Monday’s attack comes just days after authorities announced a top Baluch separatist leader was in custody.  

A military statement on Friday identified him as Gulzar Imam, also known as Shambay, saying his arrest was a “serious blow” to the Baluch insurgency in the natural resources-rich province.  

Imam led the banned Baluch Nationalist Army he founded in early 2022 and maintained close links with other insurgent groups operating in Baluchistan.  

Like other Baluch insurgent outfits, the group has vehemently opposed China’s investment in infrastructure-building projects in the province and publicly threatened to attack Chinese workers associated with them.  

“Imam has been involved in militancy since 2009 and possesses a wealth of knowledge about Baluch armed groups, their structure, financial sources, and operational tactics,” Kiyya Baloch, an independent analyst tracking the insurgency, told VOA in written comments from Norway.  

He described the detained militant as a “seasoned guerrilla commander” and “one of the most known faces” of the insurgency in the southern parts of Baluchistan.  

The province borders Afghanistan and Iran, with Islamabad repeatedly alleging the insurgents use the territories of the neighboring countries to plot cross-border attacks. Afghan and Iranian officials deny the allegations.  

China has invested billions of dollars in Pakistan, including Baluchistan, in recent years, building roads and power plants, expanding the country’s seaports, and building other infrastructure under Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative. 

The deep-water Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in the province is described as the centerpiece of what is known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC, a multi-billion-dollar collaboration.   
…

China firmly opposes a visit by India’s home minister to Arunachal Pradesh and views his activities in the area as violating Beijing’s territorial sovereignty, a foreign ministry spokesperson told a news briefing on Monday.

China has renamed some places in what India regards as its eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of its territory.

“Zangnan is China’s territory,” spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in response to a question on the visit by Indian Home Minister Amit Shah.

“The Indian official’s visit to Zangnan violates China’s territorial sovereignty, and is not conducive to the peace and tranquility of the border situation.”

China and India have had several skirmishes over the disputed border and clashes in mountainous regions in recent years have seriously strained ties.
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A group of historians from India’s leading universities have slammed recent revisions to school textbooks that include removing or trimming references to Islamic rule in the subcontinent and to the anger among some Hindu extremists at independence leader Mahatma Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Education authorities have said the history, political science and sociology texts were revised as part of a “rationalization process” but critics charge that the amendments help promote the Hindu nationalist vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

School textbooks issued by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), an autonomous organization under the Education Ministry, are part of the curriculum in thousands of schools across the country.

NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani has denied allegations that the revisions were made with a political agenda and said they are meant to lighten the academic load on students in the aftermath of the COVID 19 pandemic, which led to loss of learning.

“It’s a professional exercise meant to help students hit by the pandemic and has no ulterior political motive,” he told television news channel, NDTV.

However a group of 250 historians and academics said that while they understand the need for periodic revisions of school texts, this round “reflects the sway of divisive politics over pedagogic concerns.”

“Selectively deleting several important themes from school textbooks is not only doing great disservice to the composite heritage of the Indian subcontinent, but betraying the aspirations of the Indian masses,” historians and academics from India’s top universities such as Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Ashoka University said in a statement on Friday.

While textbooks have been amended before, critics say the latest changes are efforts to bypass the period when Muslims ruled India.

Passages on Mughals, who ruled in North India between the 16th and 19th centuries, have been either trimmed or removed in secondary and senior school texts. Right wing Hindu groups consider the Muslim rulers oppressors and wanted more focus in history texts on ancient India, which they say reflects the achievements of India under Hindu rulers.

Several towns and streets bearing Muslim names have been renamed with Hindu ones since the BJP came to power.

Prime Minister Modi said at an event last December, that in the name of history, “concocted narratives” were taught to infuse inferiority and there is a need to break free from the “narrow views” of the past to move forward.

Historians underline how diverse races and religions that came to India over the centuries molded its identity.

“With these revisions, future generations of students might lose out on the basic nuances of how that historical progression had taken place in India,” pointed out Archana Ojha, professor of history at Delhi University, who is a signatory to the statement. “You cannot write history on the basis of religion. It is an account of human progression based on political, economic and other changes. For example the process of urbanization of Delhi began in the 13th century with a Muslim ruler. The Mughals were as much Hindustani [Indian] as others.”

Other deletions in the school texts include references to the links between Hindu extremism and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the dislike of his pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity among some Hindus, as well as the ban imposed on the right wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in the aftermath of his killing. The RSS is called the ideological parent of the ruling BJP.

Among the deleted references is one that says Gandhi “was convinced that any attempt to make India into a country only for Hindus would destroy India.”

References to the riots that wracked Gujarat state in 2002 killing almost a 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, when Prime Minister Modi headed the state have also been dropped. So have some accounts of some social movements and caste-based discrimination in Hinduism.

The historians, several of whom had worked on the syllabus in the past, said in their statement that the attempts in the earlier texts were to make them as inclusive as possible, and to provide a “sense of the rich diversity of the human past both within the subcontinent and the wider world.”

Calling for the changes to be recalled, the statement said that “removing entire periods of history from textbooks would not only perpetuate misconceptions and misunderstandings, but would serve to further the divisive communal and casteist agenda of the ruling elites.”

“When we revise history we do so on the basis of new evidences, new sources or what is found in archival records which may have been overlooked. It is not done on the basis of what politicians or a certain class of people want it to be,” said Ojha. She pointed out that “in the latest revisions, there are just deletions, no new additions.”

In an editorial last week, the Indian Express newspaper, said that while curriculum reforms should be par for the course, the recent ones “excise content related to chapters in history that have acquired political overtones under the current regime.”

The newspaper said the deletions from the textbooks invite the charge “that not only does the government wish to escape unpalatable facts, but it also wants to ensure that students do not engage with social and political realities with a critical attitude.”
…

An Air India flight bound for London from Delhi Monday was forced to return to the airport due to an unruly passenger. 

An Air India statement said the passenger inflicted “physical harm to two of the cabin crew members,” causing the pilot to decide to return to Delhi.  

The airline said the passenger was handed over to the security personnel upon landing. 

The flight was rescheduled to depart for London on Monday afternoon.  
…

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation or OIC, a Saudi Arabia-based global Islamic body, has denounced violence that targeted Muslims in different Indian states during the annual Hindu festival of Ram Navami last week and called on the Indian government to take action against the perpetrators.   

Human Rights Watch expressed concerns, too, noting in an April 5 statement that “India’s Hindu festivals are increasingly being used by the ruling Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to rally voters,” leading to an increase in anti-Muslim violence across the country. The rights group also noted the festival coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.  

The Indian government has condemned the OIC and said that its statement showed its “communal mindset” and “anti-India agenda.”   

Ram Navami is an annual Hindu festival to celebrate the birth of Ram, a Hindu deity. During the day of Ram Navami, Hindus traditionally participate in processions in which the Hindu epic Ramayana— the tale of Prince Ram’s quest to save his wife — is recited.  

In recent years, however, following the rise of Hindu right-wing forces across India, the Ram Navami processions often see large numbers of people brandishing sticks, swords, machetes and even guns.   

As the processions pass through minority Muslim neighborhoods, they sometimes play anti-Muslim songs with hate-spewing lyrics — commonly known as “Hindutva pop” — on the music system, and chant abusive slogans targeting Muslims.   

Last week, anti-Muslim violence broke out in several places across the country after armed revelers from Ram Navami processions violently attacked Muslims. In Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, West Bengal and other states, communal tension and violence clashes broke out during Ram Navami processions.   

In Bihar’s Sharif town, men from the Ram Navami procession physically attacked Muslims, forcing some of them to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” meaning Hail Lord Ram, in Hindi, and beat them up before vandalizing and setting fire to a madrasa and an attached 113-year-old Islamic library. A madrasa is a religious school.   

In last week’s statement, HRW South Asia Director Meenakshi Ganguly noted that the Hindu mobs attacking Muslims are “emboldened by a sense of political patronage that affords them impunity.”  

“The record shows that it is usually Muslims who are unfairly targeted by the authorities… The BJP governments at every level have adopted discriminatory laws and policies targeting religious minorities, and its leaders and affiliates make frequent anti-minority remarks, including inciting violence,” the HRW statement said.    

The OIC called last week’s violent attacks on Muslims in India “provocative acts of violence and vandalism.” 

While taking note of the burning of the madrasa and library in Bihar, in its April 4 statement, the 57-member organization said that the violence marked a “vivid manifestation of mounting Islamophobia and systemic targeting of the Muslim community in India.”  

In other comments aimed at the OIC, Indian authorities said, “We strongly condemn the statement issued by [the] OIC Secretariat today regarding India. The OIC only does its reputation damage by being consistently manipulated by anti-India forces,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a Twitter statement.    

New Delhi-based senior BJP leader Alok Vats said he agreed that some unruly young people were infiltrating the Hindu religious rallies and giving a bad name to the community.  

“It is true that of late some chauvinistic and divisive forces are trying to rip apart the social fabric of India. The states and the police forces under them are failing to restrain their nefarious designs. If not controlled with an iron hand, they can definitely ruin the peace and stability of India,” Vats told VOA.  

The Hindu nationalist BJP is using Ram “to further its politics of Hindu supremacy,” Delhi University professor Apoorvanand, who uses one name, told VOA.  

“The strategy is to evoke a feeling of supremacy and power among Hindus by forcibly carrying out processions, which are supposedly religious, but are in actuality an instrument for abusing and threatening Muslims. Armed processions are deliberately driven through Muslim-dominated localities; mosques are targeted, and violence is provoked,” Apoorvanand said. “This process widens the divide between Hindus and Muslims, implicates Hindu youth in violent acts and criminalizes the Hindu society.” 

Zafarul-Islam Khan, former chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission, said that Ram Navami processions are used by the BJP to polarize the society on communal lines, in a desperate attempt to win elections.    

“They demonize Muslims by actively spreading hate and lies through social media. Their leaders deliver hate speeches aiming to whip up anti-Muslim passion in society. Also, they launch violent attacks against Muslims as they are during Ram Navami. All this is aimed to polarize Hindu votes,” Khan told VOA.   

“In a Hindu-majority country, communal polarization always helps the Hindu nationalist BJP garner more Hindu votes and win elections.”   

HRW’s Ganguly told VOA that India is looking to be an influential voice in world affairs, “one that speaks for the perspective of the global south.”  

“To be effective in that role, the Indian government should set an example of upholding rights and celebrating diversity. Inciting and indulging attacks on religious minorities, particularly Muslims, bias in a justice system that unfairly targets minorities and government critics, is not just wrong, but also damages India’s reputation,” she said.  

“If India seeks to be a true world leader, putting an end to human rights abuses in the country needs to be a priority,” she added. 
…

Afghanistan’s special forces killed two Islamic State fighters and arrested a third during an operation in the country’s west on Sunday, a regional official said. 

The raid on the hideout in the district of Sayed Abad in Nimroz province sparked a clash lasting 30 minutes, said Mufti Habibullah Ilham, the province’s information and culture director. 

Ilham said there were no casualties among the troops or civilians and that some military equipment was seized. 

The regional affiliate of the IS group — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — has been the key rival of the ruling Taliban since the religious group’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. 

IS has increased its attacks in Afghanistan, targeting both Taliban patrols and members of Afghanistan’s Shiite minority. On Friday, security forces killed an IS fighter during an operation in northern Parwan province. They also arrested three women and seven children, said Hikmatullah Shamim, a spokesman for the Parwan governor. 

Deputy Afghan government spokesman Bilal Karimi said authorities were serious about Afghanistan’s boundaries and sovereignty. 

“The Islamic State has no place in the country or among the people, nor does the Islamic emirate allow it,” he told The Associated Press. “The number of (IS) fighters killed or arrested so far is in the hundreds, but there is no exact number.” 

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile attacks in Afghanistan. It said one of its members was behind a deadly bombing near a checkpoint in January at Kabul’s military airport, the same man who took part in an assault on a hotel in the capital last December, and a gun attack on the Pakistani embassy.
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It was a celebratory atmosphere for officials gathered just hours away from several of India’s major tiger reserves in the southern city of Mysuru, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Sunday to much applause that the country’s tiger population has steadily grown to over 3,000 since its flagship conservation program began 50 years ago after concerns that numbers of the big cats were dwindling.

“India is a country where protecting nature is part of our culture,” Modi proclaimed. “This is why we have many unique achievements in wildlife conservation.”

Modi also launched the International Big Cats Alliance that he said will focus on the protection and conservation of seven big cat species, namely, the tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.

Protesters, meanwhile, are telling their own stories Sunday of how they have been displaced by wildlife conservation projects over the last half-century, with dozens demonstrating about an hour away from the announcement.

Project Tiger began in 1973 after a census of the big cats found India’s tigers were fast going extinct through habitat loss, unregulated sport hunting, increased poaching and retaliatory killing by people. It’s believed the tiger population was around 1,800 at the time, but experts widely consider that an overestimate due to imprecise counting methods in India until 2006. Laws attempted to address the decline, but the conservation model centered around creating protected reserves where ecosystems can function undisturbed by people.

Several Indigenous groups say the conservation strategies, deeply influenced by American environmentalism, meant uprooting numerous communities that had lived in the forests for millennia.

Members of several Indigenous or Adivasi groups — as Indigenous people are known in the country — set up the Nagarahole Adivasi Forest Rights Establishment Committee to protest evictions from their ancestral lands and seek a voice in how the forests are managed.

“Nagarahole was one of the first forests to be brought under Project Tiger and our parents and grandparents were probably among the first to be forced out of the forests in the name of conservation,” said J. A. Shivu, 27, who belongs to the Jenu Kuruba tribe. “We have lost all rights to visit our lands, temples or even collect honey from the forests. How can we continue living like this?”

Jenu, which means honey in the southern Indian Kannada language, is the tribe’s primary source of livelihood as they collect it from beehives in the forests to sell.

The fewer than 40,000 Jenu Kuruba people are one of the 75 tribal groups that the Indian government classifies as particularly vulnerable. Adivasi communities like the Jenu Kurubas are among the poorest in India.

Some experts say conservation policies that attempted to protect a pristine wilderness were influenced by prejudices against local communities.

The Indian government’s tribal affairs ministry has repeatedly said it is working on Adivasi rights. Only about 1% of the more than 100 million Adivasis in India have been granted any rights over forest lands despite a government forest rights law, passed in 2006, that aimed to “undo the historical injustice” for forest communities.

India’s tiger numbers, meanwhile, are thriving: the country’s 3,167 tigers account for more than 75% of the world’s wild tiger population.

Tigers have disappeared in Bali and Java and China’s tigers are likely extinct in the wild. The Sunda Island tiger, the other sub-species, is only found in Sumatra. India’s project to safeguard them has been praised as a success by many.

“Project Tiger hardly has a parallel in the world since a scheme of this scale and magnitude has not been so successful elsewhere,” said SP Yadav, a senior Indian government official in charge of Project Tiger.

But critics say the social costs of fortress conservation — where forest departments protect wildlife and prevent local communities from entering forest regions — is high.

Sharachchandra Lele, of the Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, said the conservation model is outdated.

“There are already several examples of forests used actively by local communities and tiger numbers have actually increased even while people have benefited in these regions,” he said.

Vidya Athreya, the director of Wildlife Conservation Society in India who has been studying the interactions between large cats and humans for the last two decades, agreed.

“Traditionally we always put wildlife over people,” Athreya said, adding that engaging with communities is the way forward for protecting wildlife in India. 

Shivu, from the Jenu Kuruba tribe, also wants to go back to a life where Indigenous communities and tigers lived together.

“We consider them gods and us the custodians of these forests,” he said.
…

Shaima, a local employee of the United Nations in Afghanistan, was shocked when she heard that she could not go to work because the Taliban had banned Afghan women from working with the U.N. agencies in the country.

“We were not expecting that such a thing would happen,” said Shaima, who did not want her real name to be used for safety reasons.

“We thought that if women are barred from working in all other places, they will continue to work in the U.N. as it is leading the humanitarian efforts in the country … where most of the people depend on international assistance,” she said.

U.N. officials said Tuesday that the Taliban informed the organization that its female Afghan employees would not be allowed to work in the country.

Shaima said the U.N. should press the Taliban to adhere to its promises of upholding women’s basic rights.

She added that the international community “should not recognize” the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan until women are given their rights.

“Words are not enough. Practical measures are needed to force the Taliban to let women work,” she said.

Taliban crackdown

Among the 4,000 employees of the U.N. in Afghanistan, 3,300 are Afghan nationals. Among them are about 400 Afghan women and 200 international female staffers.

In December 2022, the Taliban banned Afghan women from working with local and international nongovernmental organizations, but the U.N. was exempted from the ban.

At that time, the Taliban said the ban was imposed because female NGO employees were not wearing “proper hijab.”

But Shaima said that she and all her female colleagues were following the dress code. “I was wearing [the] hijab,” she said. “All my colleagues were wearing [the] hijab. We were wearing [the] hijab before the Taliban’s takeover and after that.”

She added that the “hijab is an excuse to stop women from working outside their houses.”

After seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban imposed repressive restrictions on women, including banning them from working, attending secondary school or university, traveling unaccompanied for long distances, and going to public parks and gyms.

In a report released February 9, Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, considered the Taliban’s restrictions an attempt to “erase women from all public spaces.”

In an interview with the VOA Afghan Service in March, Bennett said the Taliban’s “gender persecution is a crime against humanity.”

Financial implications

A U.N. report released in January said that the Taliban’s ban on Afghan women working with the local and international NGOs would worsen “the multiple overlapping humanitarian and economic crises” in Afghanistan.

The report also stated that the ban would complicate the outreach to 11.6 million women and girls who will need humanitarian assistance in 2023, and that 97% of the population is at risk of falling below the poverty line.

For Shaima, the only breadwinner in her family of seven, the ban was “disappointing” because she will no longer be able to support her family financially.

She worries all her efforts were in vain because she will not be able to work under the Taliban.

“We went through a lot to get an education in Afghanistan,” Shaima said.

She added that Taliban measures barring Afghan women from work “would have [a] negative impact on me, all the women and the people of Afghanistan.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a tweet, “If this measure is not reversed, it will inevitably undermine our ability to deliver lifesaving aid to the people who need it.”

Call for reversal

The U.N. said Wednesday that it would not comply with the Taliban’s decision and called on the Taliban to reverse their decree.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that the organization would continue engaging with the Taliban.

“Afghan women and men are essential to all aspects of the U.N.’s work in Afghanistan. Afghan women’s meaningful participation is essential to reach safely and effectively populations in need with principled and quality assistance. Afghan women will not be replaced by men,” Dujarric said.

 
…

Afghan religious scholars Saturday criticized a ban on female education, as a key Taliban minister warned clerics not to rebel against the government on the controversial issue.

Girls cannot go to school beyond the sixth grade in Afghanistan, with the education ban extending to universities. Women are barred from public spaces, including parks, and most forms of employment. Last week, Afghan women were barred from working at the United Nations, according to the global body, although the Taliban have yet to make a public announcement.

Authorities present the education restrictions as temporary suspensions rather than bans, but universities and schools reopened in March without their female students.

The bans have raised fierce international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed and worsened a humanitarian crisis.

Islam allows women to study, says one scholar

Two religious scholars who are well-known within Afghanistan said Saturday that authorities should reconsider their decision. Public opposition to Taliban policies is rare, although some Taliban leaders have voiced their disagreement with the decision-making process.

One scholar, Abdul Rahman Abid, said institutions should be permitted to re-admit girls and women through separate classes, hiring female teachers, staggering timetables, and even building new facilities.

Knowledge is obligatory in Islam for men and women, he told The Associated Press, and Islam allows women to study.

“My daughter is absent from school, I am ashamed, I have no answer for my daughter,” he said. “My daughter asks ‘Why girls are not allowed to learn in the Islamic system?’ I have no answer for her.”

He said reform is needed and warned that any delays are at the expense of the global Islamic community and that this also weakens the government.

Another scholar, who is a member of the Taliban, told the AP there is still time for ministries to solve the problem of girls’ education. Toryali Himat cited ministries comprising the inner circle of the supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who is based in Kandahar.

It was on his orders that the government banned girls from classrooms. Himat said there are two types of criticism, one that destroys the system and another that makes corrective criticism.

“Islam has allowed both men and women to learn, but hijab and curriculum should be considered,” Himat said. “Corrective criticism should be given and the Islamic emirate should think about this. Where there is no criticism, there is the possibility of corruption. My personal opinion is that girls should get education up to university level.”

Minister discourages ‘rebellion’

Acting Higher Education Minister Nida Mohammad Nadim said Friday that clerics should not speak against government policy.

He made his remarks after another scholar, Abdul Sami Al Ghaznawi, told students at a religious school that there was no conflict over girls’ education. He said Islamic scripture was clear that girls’ education was acceptable. Al Ghaznawi was not immediately available for comment.

Nadim appeared to target Al Ghaznawi by mentioning “an honorable scholar” at the top of a video statement released on social media.

“You encouraged the people to rebel, so what is the result?” Nadim said. “The result is that rebellion against this (ban) is allowed. If people are encouraged to rebel against the system, will it benefit Muslims?”

The minister was not immediately available for comment. But his spokesman, Hafiz Ziaullah Hashimi, confirmed Nadim’s remarks without giving further details about who they were directed at or the reason behind them.
…

Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Saturday that a roadside bomb blast had blown up a military vehicle, killing two soldiers and wounding four others.

A military statement said that the attack had occurred in the Khyber district abutting Afghanistan.

The banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing. The group has lately intensified attacks, including suicide bombings, in the country.

On Friday, Pakistan’s national security committee, which comprises top civilian and military leadership, met and approved plans to carry out a nationwide anti-militant operation to stem resurgent terrorist attacks by the TTP and other extremist groups.

“The meeting agreed to launch an all-out comprehensive operation… to rid the country of the menace of terrorism,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said in a statement. It did not say when the military action would proceed, noting that a committee was formed to make recommendations within two weeks to determine details.

Attacks nearly routine

TTP attacks have almost become routine in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Saturday’s bomb blast occurred.

In January of this year, a powerful bomb ripped through a mosque in the provincial capital of Peshawar, killing more than 100 people, mostly police officers. It was one of the deadliest-ever assaults on the country’s police force.

Local conflict-monitoring watchdogs documented more than 1,000 deaths of Pakistanis, including nearly 300 security forces, across the country in 2022.

Pakistani authorities say that the TTP’s central command is based in Afghanistan and has enjoyed “greater operational freedom” after the Taliban returned to power in the war-ravaged neighboring country in August 2021, leading to the reemergence of terrorism in Pakistan.

“The TTP’s operational capacity has grown significantly following the takeover of the Afghan Taliban next door, and it, along with peer militant groups, presents an existential threat to Pakistan’s security and the stability of its neighborhood,” the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center wrote in a recent commentary.

Group designated global terrorist organization

The Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot and close ally of Afghanistan’s Taliban, has also been designated a global terrorist organization by the United States and Britain.

Islamabad has been pressing the Afghan Taliban to evict TTP insurgents or rein in their cross-border terrorism.

The de facto authorities in Afghanistan insisted instead that Pakistan negotiate a peace deal with the militants. They eventually brokered talks in Kabul between Pakistani officials and the TTP. But the dialogue collapsed when the TTP unilaterally ended a cease-fire agreement with the Pakistani government last November.

The surge in terrorism in Pakistan comes amid a lingering political turmoil and severe economic and financial challenges facing the country.
…

Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.

Taliban bans Afghan women from working for UN

The United Nations said Wednesday that it will not comply with a Taliban decree banning Afghan women from working for the organization and called on them to revoke it. Taliban officials informed the United Nations verbally on Tuesday that an existing ban on women working for humanitarian organizations has been extended to include the U.N. The U.N. is continuing to engage with the Taliban to try to get the edict reversed. In the meantime, it has instructed both female and male Afghan staff to work from home.

UN Demands Taliban Reverse Ban on Afghan Female Staff 

Q&A: Linda Thomas-Greenfield

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke to VOA Monday about her recent trip to Costa Rica for the 2023 Democracy Summit and the important role of youth in government, her concerns about Russia’s and China’s influence in the region and calls for a non-U.N. international force to help Haiti.

Q&A: US UN Envoy: ‘Standing with Russia is a Losing Proposition’ 

ICC-indicted Russian official briefs Security Council

The Russian official charged alongside President Vladimir Putin by the International Criminal Court for the alleged abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children said Wednesday that Moscow is “fully open” to cooperation in the interest of the children. Maria Lvova-Belova told an informal Security Council meeting via video link that Russia is protecting children in its custody. Ukraine says more than 16,000 children have been forcibly abducted to Russia during the 13-month war. Several council members walked out in protest when Lvova-Belova made her remarks.

Russian Official Indicted by ICC Briefs UN Security Council 

Report: Enforced disappearances rife in Iraq 

A U.N. watchdog committee is urging the Iraqi government to take action to stop the practice of enforced disappearances, which has resulted in the abduction and disappearance of up to a million people in the past five decades. The U.N. Committee on Enforced Disappearances expressed “deep concern” that the practice is not criminalized and continues to be widespread and practiced with impunity.

Up to 1 Million Iraqis Are Victims of Enforced Disappearance 

Mozambique battles cholera after cyclone

The World Health Organization says Mozambique is experiencing its worst cholera outbreak in 20 years, following the devastation of Cyclone Freddy, which killed hundreds of people in Mozambique, Madagascar and Malawi in February and March. Tom Gould reports for VOA from Quelimane, Mozambique, on the outbreak. 

Mozambique Battles Cholera in Record Cyclone’s Aftermath 

In brief

— Cindy McCain took up her post as executive director of the World Food Program on Wednesday. It is a challenging time for the agency, which delivered food last year to a record 158 million people as it deals with funding shortages and unprecedented levels of global food insecurity. Since 2021, McCain has served as the U.S. ambassador to the three U.N. food and agriculture agencies in Rome. She succeeds David Beasley, who held the post from 2017 until earlier this week.

— International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi went to Kaliningrad, Russia, on Wednesday, where he met with officials on his efforts to secure a demilitarized zone in and around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The plant has come under repeated shelling and blackouts during the war and is currently occupied by Russian troops. A team of IAEA experts is also based at the facility. Grossi met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the city of Zaporizhzhia last week.

— A new report by the World Health Organization this week said 1 in 6 people worldwide is experiencing infertility. The WHO said this shows the urgent need to increase access to affordable, high-quality fertility care for those in need. In most countries fertility treatments are largely paid out of pocket, putting the cost of starting a family beyond the reach of many.

Good news

The U.N. said Thursday that it has secured a supertanker to replace the decaying oil tanker FSO Safer, which is moored off the coast of Yemen and poses a serious environmental threat. The Nautica set sail from Zhoushan, China, this week and will arrive in Yemen in early May. A salvage company will oversee the transfer from the Safer to the Nautica of more than a million barrels of oil that the U.N. has warned for years would cause a catastrophic environmental disaster if the nearly 50-year-old Safer started leaking or exploded. Read more from our archive about the efforts to get this mission underway.

UN Buys Oil Tanker to Begin Salvage Operation Off Yemeni Coast 

Did you know?

The World Health Organization turned 75 on Friday. When the United Nations was founded in San Francisco in 1945, diplomats agreed there was a need for a body to encourage collaboration to control the spread of dangerous diseases, and the WHO was born. On April 7, 1948, the WHO’s constitution entered into force. Now that day is recognized as World Health Day. The health agency began with a focus on mass campaigns against tuberculosis, malaria, yaws, syphilis, smallpox and leprosy. When the polio vaccine was developed in 1952, the agency began work to eradicate the disease worldwide. The WHO also brings health care to refugees, displaced persons and people living in conflict zones. Most recently, the WHO has been at the forefront of coordinating the global response to the COVID-19 virus, including vaccinations.
…

A women-run radio station in northeastern Afghanistan has resumed broadcasting after officials shut it down for a week for playing music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official and the head of the station said Friday.

Sadai Banowan, which means “women’s voice” in Dari, was launched 10 years ago in Badakhshan province and is Afghanistan’s only women-run radio station. Six of its eight staff members are women.

Moezuddin Ahmadi, the director for Information and Culture in Badakhshan, said the station was allowed to resume activities on Thursday after it had obeyed the “laws and regulations of the Islamic Emirate” and agreed to stop broadcasting any kind of music.

Station head Najia Sorosh said after the station “gave a commitment to officials at the information and culture department, they unlocked the door of the station,” and they started broadcasting again.

The Afghan Journalist Safety Committee, an Afghan watchdog organization that promotes the safety of journalists and press freedom and which was involved in mediation for the station’s reopening, welcomed the resumption of broadcasts.

“Following AJSC’s advocacy efforts, Sadia Banowan radio resumed its broadcasts,” it said in a tweet.

Representatives from the Ministry of Information and Culture and the Vice and Virtue Directorate had shut down the station a week earlier.

Many journalists lost their jobs after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Media outlets closed over a lack of funds or because staff left the country, according to the Afghan Independent Journalists Association.

The Taliban have barred women from most forms of employment and education beyond the sixth grade, including university. There is no official ban on music. During their previous rule in the late 1990s, the Taliban barred most television, radio and newspapers in the country.
…

Eight Filipinos were nailed to crosses to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a gory Good Friday tradition that draws thousands of devotees and tourists to the Philippines despite being rejected by the Catholic church.

The real-life crucifixions in the farming village of San Pedro Cutud in Pampanga province north of Manila resumed after a three-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic. About a dozen villagers registered but only eight men participated, including 62-year-old sign painter Ruben Enaje, who was nailed to a wooden cross for the 34th time in San Pedro Cutud.

In a news conference shortly after his brief crucifixion, Enaje said he prayed for the eradication of the COVID-19 virus and the end of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has contributed to gas and food prices soaring worldwide. 

“It’s just these two countries involved in that war, Russia and Ukraine, but all of us are being affected,” said Enaje, who appeared to be well and showed his two bandaged hands to journalists.

The father of four said he wanted to end his extraordinary penitence because of his age but would decide with finality before Lent next year. While the pain from the nailing was not as intense as anticipated, he said he always felt edgy before each crucifixion.

“To be honest, I always feel nervous because I could end up dead on the cross,” he told The Associated Press before Friday’s nailing.

“When I’m laid down on the cross, my body begins to feel cold,” he said. “When my hands are tied, I just close my eyes and tell myself, ‘I can do this. I can do this.’” 

Surviving nearly unscathed when he fell from a three-story building in 1985 prompted Enaje to undergo the ordeal as thanksgiving for what he considered a miracle. He extended the ritual after loved ones recovered from serious illnesses, one after another, turning him into a village celebrity as the “Christ” in the Lenten reenactment of the Way of the Cross.

Ahead of their crucifixion on a dusty hill, Enaje and the other devotees, wearing thorny crowns of twigs, carried heavy wooden crosses on their backs for more than a kilometer (more than half a mile) in the scorching heat. Village actors dressed as Roman centurions later hammered 4-inch (10-centimeter) stainless steel nails through his palms and feet, then set him aloft on a cross under the sun for about 10 minutes.

Other penitents walked barefoot through village streets and beat their bare backs with sharp bamboo sticks and pieces of wood. Some participants in the past opened cuts in the penitents’ backs using broken glass to ensure the ritual was sufficiently bloody.

The gruesome spectacle reflects the Philippines’ unique brand of Catholicism, which merges church traditions with folk superstitions. 

Many of the mostly impoverished penitents undergo the ritual to atone for sins, pray for the sick or for a better life, and give thanks for miracles.

Church leaders in the Philippines have frowned on the crucifixions and self-flagellations, saying Filipinos can show their deep faith and religious devotion without hurting themselves and by doing charity work instead, such as donating blood.

Robert Reyes, a prominent Catholic priest and human rights activist in the country, said the bloody rites reflect the church’s failure to fully educate many Filipinos on Christian tenets, leaving them on their own to explore personal ways of seeking divine help for all sorts of maladies.

Folk Catholicism has become deeply entrenched in the local religious culture, Reyes said, citing a chaotic procession of a black statue of Jesus Christ called the Black Nazarene each January, which authorities say draw more than a million devotees each year in one of Asia’s largest religious festivals. Many bring towels to be wiped on the wooden statue, believing it has powers to cure ailments and ensure good health and a better life.

“The question is, where were we church people when they started doing this?” Reyes asked, saying the clergy should immerse itself in communities more and converse regularly with villagers. “If we judge them, we’ll just alienate them.”

The decadeslong crucifixion tradition, meanwhile, has put impoverished San Pedro Cutud — one of the more than 500 villages in rice-growing Pampanga province — on the map.

Organizers said more than 15,000 foreign and Filipino tourists and devotees gathered for the cross nailings in Cutud and two other nearby villages. There was a festive air as villagers peddled bottled water, hats, food and religious items, and police and marshals kept order.

“They like this because there is really nothing like this on earth,” said Johnson Gareth, a British tour organizer, who brought 15 tourists from eight countries, including the United States, Canada and Germany, to witness the crucifixions. “It’s less gruesome than people think. They think it’s going to be very macabre or very disgusting but it’s not. It’s done in a very respectful way.”

In the past, Gareth said tourists were “genuinely inspired and I think they left with a newfound respect for people’s beliefs.” 
…

On a Monday afternoon the streets of Rainawari neighborhood of Srinagar on the Indian side of Kashmir were soaked by heavy rainfall. Despite weather forecasts predicting a downpour, Khair Ullah Mughal and his brother Habeeb Ullah Mughal set out from their ancestral three-story house in the middle of the overcast night.

Khair, 60, carried the drum on his shoulder, beating it all along the way through various areas of Rainawari, shouting “time for Suhoor.” However, Habeeb, 57, carried a long stick in his hands as a defense against animals such as stray dogs and porcupines.

Suhoor is Muslims’ predawn meal consumed during Ramadan before the day’s fasting begins.

“For 30 years, we have carried on our father’s legacy since his passing,” said Khair. “Our goal in taking to the streets during the holy month in the dead of the night is to rouse people from their slumber so they can consume Suhoor before beginning their fast,” he said.

“We begin our night shift at 2:30 a.m. and return home after an hour and a half, so that we too can fulfill fasting rituals,” Khair said. “Over the last three decades, we have not missed a single night, as we carry a huge responsibility on our shoulders,” he added.

The tradition of awakening people for Suhoor in Kashmir traces its origin to the14th century, following the arrival of Islam in the region from Central Asia.

Zareef Ahmad Zareef, a noted historian from Kashmir, told VOA that some individuals voluntarily used to wake up early and blow rams’ horns to signal Suhoor for locals.

“The horn of the ram had a small hole on its front, and it would make some noise when air was forced through it,” Zareef said. “These individuals were later given the name Sahar Khawans,” he said, adding with the passage of time these some of them made it a part of their profession to earn extra income and at the same time introduced the use of drums in the valley.

“The reason behind introducing drums could have been that its sound reaches more people,” Zareef said. “Since then, the drums have become an integral part of the Ramadan in the region,” he added.

Every year, Sher Ahmad Querishi, a Ramadan drummer from Kupwara district of north Kashmir, eagerly waits for Ramadan. He visits Habba Kadal area in Srinagar to beat his drum and wake people up for 30 consecutive nights.

“We don’t beat drums for money, but for the sake of earning good deeds,” Querishi told VOA. “Despite being engaged in different professions during the day, at night, we become drummers, sacrificing our comfort and sleep,” he added.

Ramadan drummers, Querishi said, do not make much money, as they are paid just 50 to 60 cents by each household. He added that drummers are usually poor and come from different rural areas of the Kashmir valley.

“Most of us hail from villages either in north or south Kashmir. Only a few drummers are from cities such as Srinagar and they too belong to economically poor classes,” Querishi said. “In Ramadan we work through day and night apart from fulfilling all the religious duties,” he said.

Habeeb Ullah Mughal said the numbers of Ramadan drummers are dropping every year, as people no longer depend on them.

“Until the last decade we were relevant in the society, but the invention of new technologies, such as mobile phones have made us irrelevant in modern times,” Habeeb said. “We used to cover a large area but in the last couple of years we have narrowed our circle as people objected, saying we disturb them and there is no need to visit their area as they set alarms on their mobile phones,” he added.

The younger generation, Habeeb said, is also not interested, and, as a result, the numbers of Ramadan drummers are gradually dropping.

“The reason for not carrying the tradition is best known to the younger generation,” Habeeb said. “As far as our family is concerned we have no male members who could carry the centuries old tradition after us,” he added.

Meanwhile a young man who identified himself as Ghulam Hassan Khan, 25, uses tape-recorded to wake people for Suhoor. He said he has recorded the message and plays the tape in at least three Srinagar areas.

“For three years I have been using tape recorder to wake people up for Suhoor,” Khan said. “My father was a drummer but after he passed away a few years ago I decided to follow his path,” he said, adding the reason he chose to use tape recorder instead of the traditional drum is that he cannot afford the cost of over $200.
…

Afghan women and men who work for the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan stayed home Thursday while the United Nations sought clarification on the Taliban’s statement ordering all local female employees to be fired because of their sex.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in New York that the Security Council was briefed on the issue Thursday and that the organization was continuing to engage with the Taliban.

“Afghan women and men are essential to all aspects of the U.N.’s work in Afghanistan. Afghan women’s meaningful participation is essential to reach safely and effectively populations in need with principled and quality assistance. Afghan women will not be replaced by men,” Dujarric said.

This week’s order by the Taliban to fire all female employees was the first time the world body has received such an order since its inception in 1945. The order followed the Islamist group’s previous edicts terminating women’s right to work, education and many other basic liberties.

“Banning Afghan women from working with the U.N. in Afghanistan is an intolerable violation of the most basic human rights,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted on Wednesday.

Some Afghan activists said the Taliban’s latest order marked the time for the international community to take drastic action.

“United Nations! Stand with your female employees and suspend your activities in Afghanistan,” said activists from a group calling itself Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition.

In a statement, the group said the U.N. should suspend its operations in Afghanistan until Afghan women were allowed to return to work.

‘Don’t abandon Afghans’

Afghanistan is the largest humanitarian operation in the world for the U.N., requiring a $4.6 billion appeal for funding this year.

More than half of Afghanistan’s estimated population of 38 million suffers from severe hunger and 6 million of them are facing famine, the U.N. said.

“The world cannot abandon the people of Afghanistan at this precarious moment,” Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Despite Alakbarov’s plea, the U.N. reported this week that it still was far short of funding its Afghan operations.

“Despite Afghanistan being the world’s largest and most severe humanitarian crisis, the 2023 appeal has received less than 5% of its requirement, making it the lowest funded aid operation globally,” the U.N. humanitarian coordination body said on Monday.

The drop in aid was anticipated and linked to the Taliban’s bans on Afghan women.

Speaking at the U.N. Security Council last month, Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), warned that “funding for Afghanistan is likely to drop if women [are] not allowed to work.”

“The U.N. cannot and must not leave Afghanistan but instead [should] have a harder look as to why their approach and strategy in Afghanistan is failing,” Heela Najibullah, a conflict resolution researcher at the University of Zurich, told VOA.

UNAMA still talking to Taliban

Established in 2002 immediately after the Taliban were ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition, UNAMA, primarily a political mission with humanitarian and human rights priorities, has an annual budget of about $180 million, 22% of which is funded by the United States.

“Taliban rulers generally view UNAMA’s role less as an impartial political mission and conduit with the world and more as a proxy mission under Washington’s thumb,” Javid Ahmad, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told VOA.

Not recognized by any government, the Taliban have also been denied Afghanistan’s permanent representation at the U.N. in New York.

That has left UNAMA as the main international organization still talking to the group.

“UNAMA has been managing a nearly impossible task to be tough on the Taliban … while at the same time engaging in dialogue with the Taliban and avoiding being kicked out of the country,” Scott Worden, director of Afghanistan and Central Asia programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA.

Suspending all U.N. activities would seriously exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, but some still debate the pros and cons of suspending UNAMA’s political mission.

“It may prove to be a forcing mechanism and focus energy toward a faster solution to the fundamental problems of Taliban governance,” Worden said, adding that such a move could shock the conscience of some Taliban members who have quietly opposed the extreme decisions of their supreme leader.

But Ahmad of the Atlantic Council said walking away could empower Taliban factions who seek international isolation.

“There are powerful elements among Taliban rulers who desire to establish an ideological hermit kingdom like North Korea in order to insulate themselves from external pressure in the face of internal dissent. UNAMA’s disengagement will only expedite that process, something that could later become dangerously unmanageable,” he said.

VOA U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
…

The White House pinned most of the blame for the chaotic U.S. military exit from Afghanistan in 2021 on the previous administration in a publicly released summary of classified reports sent to Congress on Thursday by the departments of State and Defense.

President Joe Biden was “severely constrained” by conditions created by his predecessor, President Donald Trump, said the document outlining after-action reports examining the widely criticized withdrawal.

“While it was always the president’s intent to end that war, it is also undeniable that decisions made and the lack of planning done by the previous administration significantly limited options available,” said John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, during a briefing to reporters Thursday.

The 12-page summary blamed Trump for a series of American troop drawdowns from Afghanistan and for negotiating the 2020 Doha Agreement with the Taliban, under which the United States agreed to withdraw all U.S. forces by May 2021.

“During the transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration, the outgoing Administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies,” the document said.

“As a result, when President Biden took office on January 20, 2021, the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country,” the summary said.

“At the same time, the United States had only 2,500 troops on the ground — the lowest number of troops in Afghanistan since 2001 — and President Biden was facing President Trump’s near-term deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021, or the Taliban would resume its attacks on U.S. and allied troops.”

The White House summary noted the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community in May 2021 that “Kabul would probably not come under serious pressure until late 2021 after U.S. troops departed.” No U.S. agency predicted that the group would take over so quickly, Kirby said, nor that the Afghans would “fail to fight for their country, especially after 20 years of American support.”

House Republicans are likely to use the classified reports to ramp up probes into the administration’s handling of the military exit from Afghanistan.

“John Kirby’s comments during today’s White House press briefing were disgraceful and insulting,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Republican lawmaker, said in a statement Thursday.

“President Biden made the decision to withdraw and even picked the exact date; he is responsible for the massive failures in planning and execution.”

Chaos from lack of clarity

Much of the chaos during the withdrawal stems from what aid groups and evacuees have described as inconsistent policies regarding which Afghans were allowed to board evacuation flights out of the country. Some of these Afghans, including those who had worked as interpreters and in other supporting roles for the U.S. military, were vulnerable to retaliation by the Taliban.

Footage of dozens of desperate Afghans running after a U.S. military plane taking off from Hamid Karzai International Airport, climbing onto the landing gear and some falling to their deaths have become the defining images of the withdrawal and triggered massive criticism of the administration.

Kirby took issue with reporters who characterized the withdrawal as chaotic and sidestepped a question from VOA on how the Trump administration could be responsible for the determination of who was allowed to board these evacuation flights.

“Those first few days were very, very tough. They were very hectic because we didn’t have a force presence at Karzai International Airport,” Kirby said, adding that a “remarkable,” massive evacuation process was soon established.

“At one point during the evacuation there was an aircraft taking off full of people, Americans and Afghans alike, every 48 minutes. And not one single mission was missed,” he added.

While more than 124,000 American citizens, permanent residents and Afghans were ultimately evacuated, some planes left empty while thousands of people were stranded in Kabul.

Aid groups assisting with the evacuation said that problems plaguing the airlift were mainly the result of inconsistent U.S. policies and a lack of coordination between the State Department and the Pentagon. As a result, vulnerable Afghans were left behind while those who were not at risk were evacuated.

“It appears that while some elements of the Department of State and Department of Defense did an incredible job, they did so despite a lack of interagency coordination and at times incoherent direction from the White House,” said Mark Jacobson, who assisted in organizing evacuees out of Afghanistan, to VOA.

Jacobson served in 2006 in Afghanistan as a naval intelligence officer and from 2009-2011 as the deputy NATO representative and deputy political adviser at the International Security Assistance Force.

In its summary, the White House said one of the lessons learned from the withdrawal is to “prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation.” It said officials have used lessons from Afghanistan to improve evacuation procedures in Ethiopia and Ukraine.

“If there’s any silver lining it is that they at least acknowledged what a s___ show Afghanistan was and did work much harder to consider potential courses of action in Ukraine,” Jacobson said.

“What remains disturbing is that despite successful efforts? to get Ukrainian refugees into the U.S., too many brave Afghans are still languishing in camps in the UAE and other third countries with no hope of getting to the United States, not to mention families left behind in Afghanistan.”

No regrets

Biden has repeatedly said he does not regret his decision to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, arguing the U.S. spent an estimated $2 billion and lost some 2,400 American lives over two decades fighting in the country.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has also said he has “no regrets” about the withdrawal, in which 13 American soldiers and 169 Afghans were killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport claimed by the Islamic State-Khorasan Province.

Kirby said Biden is “very proud of the manner” in which his administration conducted the withdrawal, and the reviews done voluntarily by the departments show “how seriously the president felt about learning lessons from this withdrawal.”
…

India and China broke into fresh diplomatic sparring on Thursday, accusing each other of creating visa hassles for their journalists posted in New Delhi and Beijing.

The exchange came days after India objected to China renaming or “standardizing” names of 11 locations in the eastern state of Arunchal Pradesh, which China calls southern Tibet and claims as its territory.

Indian newspapers reported this week that two Indian journalists posted in Beijing were barred from returning to their jobs in the Chinese capital from India.

Correspondents for The Hindu newspaper and state broadcaster Prasar Bharati were told on Tuesday that their visas have been frozen, an Indian source familiar with the issue told Reuters.

Asked about the visa suspensions, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Thursday that Chinese journalists have received unfair and discriminatory treatment in India for a long time, and a Xinhua journalist was recently asked to leave India by March 31.

“China has always treated Indian journalists well,” Mao said. Chinese authorities have been in touch with the Indian government, which did not respond “nor correct the mistake,” she said.

“China therefore has to take corresponding counter measures to safeguard our legitimate interests. China welcomes Indian journalists to work in China. If India can correct its mistakes, China is willing to continue to facilitate Indian journalists in China,” Mao added.

In New Delhi, foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said India hoped “Chinese authorities would facilitate their continued presence and reporting from China.”

Relations between the nuclear-armed Asian giants have deteriorated since mid-2020, when Chinese and Indian troops clashed on their disputed Himalayan frontier, leaving 24 dead.

The situation has largely calmed after military and diplomatic talks, but the face-off continues in pockets along the frontier.

Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar last month said the situation on the border was fragile and dangerous, with military forces deployed very close to each other in some places.
…

The United Nations said Wednesday that it “condemns in the strongest terms” the Taliban’s decision to prohibit Afghan women from working for the world body in Afghanistan, calling the ban unlawful and unacceptable.

“It constitutes an unparalleled violation of women’s rights, a flagrant breach of humanitarian principles, and a breach of international rules on the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” lamented the statement issued by the U.N. office in Kabul.

“The U.N. has therefore instructed all national staff — men and women — not to report to the office until further notice,” it said, adding that several U.N. national staff members had already experienced restrictions on their movements, including harassment, intimidation and detention.

The statement warned the Taliban order would further impact the international community’s engagement with Afghanistan and the U.N.’s ability, including that of its humanitarian partners, to reach the most vulnerable — especially women and girls — as they experience an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

The Taliban have not publicly commented on the ban, but U.N. officials were notified Tuesday that previously existing restrictions on female relief workers were being extended.

The hard-line rulers have imposed sweeping restrictions on Afghan women since taking control of the impoverished South Asian nation in August 2021. Women have been banned from accessing higher education and many government jobs and public spaces. Girls are also not allowed to attend secondary schools beyond sixth grade.

In late December, the de facto fundamentalist leadership barred Afghan female staff members from working with domestic and international aid groups. It led to the suspension of some aid programs in Afghanistan, where the U.N. estimates more than 28 million people, or two-thirds of the population, are struggling to survive. Of those, 20 million people are food insecure, and 6 million are one step away from famine.

The U.N. has nearly 4,000 staff members in the country, of which about 3,300 are Afghan nationals. Among them are about 400 Afghan women and 200 international female staffers.

“In the history of the United Nations, no other regime has ever tried to ban women from working for the organization just because they are women. This decision represents an assault against women, the fundamental principles of the U.N., and on international law,” said Roza Otunbayeva, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

The statement noted that Otunbayeva was engaging with the de facto Afghan authorities to convey the U.N.’s protest and to seek an immediate reversal of the order.

The international community has not recognized the Taliban as legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, primarily over their treatment of women.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Wednesday that the Taliban “cannot be allowed to continue to restrict women from providing support to women.”

“We are working very, very closely with our Afghan partners and fighting against what the Taliban are doing — their attempt to erase women. That is appalling. It’s unacceptable,” she said.

‘No compromise’

The de facto authorities have ignored calls to ease the curbs and dismissed criticism of their governance, saying it is in line with Afghan culture and Islamic law or Shariah.

In an apparent bid to reinforce their defiance, the Taliban last week reissued a recent audio speech of their reclusive radical chief, Hibatullah Akhundzada, with English subtitles.

“Today, the world does not want Afghanistan and its government to rule by its own will. Neither will I let them establish their law, nor will they allow me to apply my law,” Akhundzada told a gathering of Afghan religious scholars.

“Neither a compromise is possible, nor a compromise has been made. …Therefore, your responsibility is not just to successfully establish Shariah in Afghanistan; rather, it is incumbent upon the scholars of Afghanistan to lead the whole world on Shariah,” he said.
…

India is taking steps to promote the use of its own currency for international trade as part of a push to boost its exports in countries that are grappling with a shortage of dollars or hit with Western sanctions.

Trade experts say moves to promote the Indian rupee as an alternative to the dollar and currencies like the euro gained momentum after Western sanctions on Russia following its war with Ukraine prompted New Delhi and Moscow to trade in currencies other than the dollar including the ruble and rupee.

India has not joined the U.S.-led sanctions and its imports of cheaper crude from Russia have spiraled in the past year.

India’s commerce secretary, Sunil Barthwal, said at a news conference last Friday that New Delhi will support international trade using the rupee.

“If there are countries where there is any currency failure or they are having dollar shortages or international currency shortages, we are willing to trade in rupee with them, which will take not only our exports forward but also disaster-proof those countries,” Barthwal said in announcing the country’s new foreign trade policy.

India is among several countries exploring trading mechanisms that bypass the dollar, which has dominated international trade for decades.

New Delhi has signed an agreement with Malaysia that paves the way for trade in Indian rupees.

“Trade between India and Malaysia can now be settled in Indian Rupee (INR) in addition to the current modes of settlement in other currencies,” the foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

Experts say the move could help promote India’s trade with South Asian countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh that are grappling with a shortage of dollars. Like many developing countries, the rising global prices of oil and food in the wake of the Ukraine war have put pressure on their foreign exchange reserves.

Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt last year after its foreign exchange reserves plunged amid an economic crisis. Bangladesh’s dollar reserves have fallen to their lowest level in six years.

“The rupee mechanism is a good measure to deal with countries facing a dollar crunch. For example, from the exporters point of view, if they cannot trade with Sri Lanka because they don’t have sufficient foreign exchange, it is better to export in rupees and carry on business,” Ajay Sahai, Director-General of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations told VOA.

India is also holding discussions on trading in rupees with larger trading partners, including key oil suppliers Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

Trade experts point out that it is not just Western sanctions on Russia that accelerated the trend to circumvent the dollar. The strength of the U.S. currency in the past year has also posed a challenge for many developing countries including India, which have seen their import bills soar.

“India does not earn enough dollars because it runs a trade deficit as it imports more than it exports. And as the economy is rebounding, imports are rising, putting pressure on the Indian rupee and making it depreciate sharply against the dollar,” said Biswajit Dhar, a professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “So if you trade in rupees instead of dollars, one is basically taking it off the hook.”

However, efforts at increasing rupee trade are at a very nascent stage. “We still have a long way to go and a predominant share of trade happens in dollars,” pointed out Sahai, saying that trading in rupees presents both advantages and challenges.

“The advantage is that you are protected against dollar fluctuations, but at the same time, we lose the advantage of a depreciating rupee,” said Sahai.

Malaysia will be a test case that other countries will watch to decide whether trading in the Indian currency is feasible.

India has already established a rupee-ruble payment mechanism with Moscow, which experts say is serving as a template for other countries.

Last July, banks from 18 countries set up rupee accounts in Indian banks. They include Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania, Israel, Germany, Oman and Singapore.

India is not the only country making efforts to circumvent the U.S. currency for trade. China and Russia are leading efforts to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar as relations between the Washington and Beijing deteriorate and Moscow tries to insulate itself from the impact of Western sanctions.

East Asian countries are also looking to boost trade within the region in local currencies. A meeting of central bank governors and finance ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Countries (ASEAN) last week decided to explore how to promote the use of local currencies in the region for financial transactions.
…

Taliban officials in Afghanistan have informed the United Nations they are banning women from working for the organization in Afghanistan, the U.N. said Tuesday about the group’s latest edict restricting the rights and movements of women in that country.

“For the [U.N.] secretary-general [Antonio Guterres], any such ban would be unacceptable and frankly inconceivable,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters. “This is the latest in a disturbing trend undermining the ability of aid organizations to reach those most in need.”

The U.N. had expressed concern in recent months that this particular ban would come.

In January, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed went to the Afghan cities of Kabul, Kandahar and Herat with a high-level delegation to speak with Taliban officials about a series of decrees that have eroded the rights of women and girls, particularly on going to school and university and working outside the home.

Some aid groups suspend work

On December 24, 2022, the Taliban banned Afghan women from working with domestic and international aid groups. Some international nongovernmental organizations suspended their work after the decree. The U.N. feared at the time that international organizations would be next, which now appears to be the case.

“We are still looking into how this development would affect our operations in the country, and we are expecting to have more meetings with the de facto authorities tomorrow in Kabul to seek more clarity,” Dujarric said.

An initial statement from the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, known by its acronym UNAMA, expressed “serious concern that female national U.N. staff members have been prevented from reporting to work in Nangarhar province.”

Dujarric said the organization had not been notified in writing of the ban but was told “through various conduits” that the edict applies to Afghan women working for the U.N. across the country, not just in Nangarhar province. As of Tuesday, UNAMA told him that Afghan female staff members were still continuing to work in other parts of Afghanistan. It was not clear when the ban would go into effect across the country.

There was no immediate public comment from the Taliban on the move.

Female staff critical to UN, say officials

Both UNAMA and Dujarric were explicit in stating the critical value of female staff to the smooth continuation of U.N. operations on the ground.

“Obviously, given the society and culture, you need women to deliver aid to women,” Dujarric told reporters, adding that the U.N. is engaging the de facto authorities.

The World Food Program estimates that nearly 20 million Afghans are acutely food-insecure, including more than 6 million people on the brink of famine-like conditions.

The U.N. has nearly 4,000 staff members in Afghanistan, of which about 3,300 are Afghan nationals. Among them are about 400 Afghan women and 200 international female staffers.
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Inside a large building that was once used as a commercial guesthouse for foreign visitors in Kabul are numerous rooms occupied by families and individuals who are not allowed to go outside or disclose their exact location to anyone.

Brought from different parts of Afghanistan, the residents are hosted in the facility before their flights to a third country where they will be processed for final relocation to the United States.

Nearly two years after the Taliban’s return to power, the U.S. has continued evacuating Afghans under special immigration and refugee admission programs despite having no consular or diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.

Aware of the ongoing relocation flights, Taliban authorities have not impeded the program so far despite widespread allegations that the group targets Afghans who worked for the previous U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Through chartered flights, the U.S. government has relocated from Afghanistan thousands of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied children, refugees and Afghans who qualify under what is known as a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, program. Special immigrant visas are reserved for those who worked for U.S. entities and programs in Afghanistan before the Taliban seized power.

More than 90,000 Afghans have been resettled across the United States over the past 20 months, according to the State Department.

More than 11,000 SIVs were issued to Afghans between October 2021 and September 2022, according to official figures.

This year, U.S. President Joe Biden has requested that Congress approve 20,000 additional Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans who helped the U.S. government.

At least 2,980 Afghans came through the refugee admission program from October 2022 to February 2023.

The U.S. government plans to admit 125,000 refugees globally this year, but the State Department said it could not say how many of them would be Afghans.

Three processing locations

Before arriving in the United States, the immigrants and refugees undergo security and immigration screenings at processing facilities in third countries.

“The Department’s principal processing location for relocated Afghans is Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar. It is also currently processing Afghans for resettlement to the United States in Albania and Kosovo,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA via email.

During two weeks of a chaotic evacuation from Kabul in August 2021, U.S. military planes flew about 124,000 individuals out of Afghanistan.

Several thousand Afghans also boarded private flights to the United Arab Emirates, where they have remained at a facility called Emirates Humanitarian City in hopes of resettling in the U.S., Canada or a European country.

“The U.S. government is engaged in case processing for Afghans at the Emirates Humanitarian City,” the spokesperson said, adding that the United States was not involved in the management of the facility where evacuees have protested over resettlement uncertainty.

Waiting for his departure flight from Kabul, one former U.S. contractor who did not want to be named for security reasons said that his family of five would be taken to Albania sometime in the next two weeks.

“I don’t know how long we will remain in Albania, but I hope it will not be too long,” he told VOA.

Parole deadline

In addition to SIVs and refugees, the United States has admitted thousands of Afghans under a temporary humanitarian parole program.

The 18-month program offered in March 2022 is set to expire this September, while a proposed bill called the Afghan Adjustment Act, which was drafted by lawmakers last year to create a legal pathway for the permanent settlement of Afghan parolees, has not yet received bipartisan approval.

“Without the Afghan Adjustment Act, Afghans still either have to apply for permanent residency through the Special Immigrant Visa program, which takes years, or through the complex and overwhelmingly backlogged U.S. asylum system,” Brian Zumhagen, a spokesperson for HIAS, a refugee support organization, told VOA.

The act can provide “contingencies in the event that an evacuee’s parole expires before they receive a permanent status,” Zumhagen added.

On top of legal uncertainty, some Afghans face other social and economic challenges such as finding affordable housing and navigating systems for public benefits such as health insurance and food vouchers.

Answering to lawmakers last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he is “personally committed to keeping our promises to those who stood by us in Afghanistan.”

“The efficient processing and ultimate resettlement of these individuals continues apace and remains among the administration’s highest priorities,” said a State Department spokesperson.
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India rejected on Tuesday the renaming by China of places in what India regards as its eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of its territory.

China and India fought a war along parts of their poorly demarcated 3,800-kilometer frontier in 1962 and clashes in mountainous regions in recent years have seriously strained relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

The latest angry exchange of words was triggered on Sunday when China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a statement in which it said it had “standardized” the names of 11 places, including five mountains, in what China calls its southern Tibet region.

The statement included a map that showed the 11 places renamed by China as being within “Zangnan”, or southern Tibet in Chinese, with Arunachal Pradesh included in southern Tibet and China’s border with India demarcated as just north of the Brahmaputra river.

India rejected that.

“Arunachal Pradesh is, has been and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on Twitter.

But a spokesperson at the Chinese foreign ministry said the name changes were “completely within the scope of China’s sovereignty.”

“The southern Tibet region is Chinese territory,” the spokesperson, Mao Ning, told a regular media briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.

At least 24 soldiers were killed when the two sides clashed in the Ladakh region, on the western part of their border, in 2020 but the situation calmed down after diplomatic and military talks.

In December last year, troops from the two sides engaged in scuffles in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh.

Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said last month the situation in Ladakh was fragile and dangerous, with military forces deployed very close to each other in some places.
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Firefighters were working to get under control a massive fire that burned through a popular clothing market and spread to other small markets and buildings in Bangladesh’s capital Tuesday. No casualties have been reported so far. 

The fire started at Bangabazar Market in Dhaka at 6:10 a.m. and firefighters from 47 units were working to douse the blaze, fire service official Rafi Al Faruk told The Associated Press by phone. 

It continued to rage six hours after it began. Anwarul Islam, another fire service official, said they didn’t know how the fire originated.  

Many shop owners in Bangabazar Market burst into tears; they had been hoping for good business ahead of Islam’s largest festival Eid-al Fitr later this month. 

“I have two shops here. Everything is gone,” said Mohammed Mohsin as he sobbed. “All my capital has been invested here. Why does God punish me this way?” 

Many merchants tried to save some of their belongings but failed as the fire spread quickly. 

Fires are common in commercial places in Bangladesh because of lax monitoring and lack of fire safety arrangements. But the country’s garment industry, which has had devastating fires in the past, has improved significantly over the last decade. 
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